“How Wages, Taxes, and American Value are Reshoring US Manufacturing Jobs” By Paul Carlson, CliftonLarsonAllen The flow of American manufacturing jobs overseas has peaked and is now reversing as U.S. companies find more than just economic reasons to bring them back home. Over the past few decades, the United States has lost as many as 4 million manufacturing jobs to foreign nations as companies look for ways to reduce costs. But the overseas manufacturing landscape is changing significantly. The emerging market wage difference that existed when the decision was made to offshore manufacturing is now dwindling, and in the past few years the costs of production have been increasing. This, in turn, has led to a growing number of companies reshoring — bringing manufacturing back to the United States. Catch the reshoring wave According to the 2016 Reshoring Report from the Reshoring Initiative — an organization working to return manufacturing jobs to the United States — more jobs are returning to the United States than are going abroad. “We publish this data annually to show companies that their peers are successfully reshoring and that they should reevaluate their sourcing and siting decisions,” says Harry Moser, founder and president of the Reshoring Initiative, in a May 15, 2017, statement. “With 3 to 4 million manufacturing jobs still offshore, as measured by our $500 billion annual trade deficit, there is potential for much more growth.” The report found that 77,000 new reshoring and foreign direct investment (FDI) manufacturing jobs were created in 2016. This is a 500 percent increase from the low of 2000 – 2003, when only 12,000 jobs were created on average annually. Overall, it is estimated that a net 25,000 new jobs were created in 2016. Jobs are returning from Asia Most of the jobs being reshored are from Asian countries, where 138,450 jobs have already been brought back to the United States. Of those jobs, most came from China. During the 2010 to 2016 timeframe, China accounted for approximately 60 percent of all manufacturing jobs created by reshoring and FDI. One of the biggest reasons for this trend is the shrinking wage benefit in China. Since 2001, the hourly Chinese manufacturing has risen by approximately 12 percent a year on...

“The Reshoring Challenge: Why and How CEOs are Moving Jobs Back to America” By William J. Holstein, Chief Executive For his reshoring initiative, Rongione paid to move unique knitting equipment from China to Pennsylvania in part by using a YouTube video of Jackson to appeal to investors on Kickstarter, the crowdsourcing website. Bollman, which says it is America’s oldest hat company, with more than $10 million in annual sales, bought the Kangol brand in 2001 from a British company. That company had previously sent all of its custom-made machines dating back to the 1930s and 1940s to southern China, where it made the beret-like Kangol hats. So Bollman, in effect, inherited a factory in China, containing the special machines that performed at much lower costs than any new machine might. Bollman struggled to manage the factory profitably and ultimately sold it to a Chinese hat maker, but that arrangement fell apart and the idea to simply move the equipment to central Pennsylvania was born. Rongione set aside some of the employee-owned company’s funds, raised some from the state of Pennsylvania and then launched the Kickstarter campaign. Jackson, wearing a t-shirt that reads “Motherfunder,” a slight variation of a word he’s known for uttering on screen, appealed to viewers to support the move. They did, ponying up more than $100,000. The company recently moved 10 of the knitting machines, is preparing to move dozens more, and is hiring workers at a starting hourly wage of $10.30 an hour. But it is finding that its workers, both new and old, have a big learning curve ahead of them in absorbing how to master the knitting process, which is new to the company. “Hiring people with the specific knowledge has been virtually impossible,” Rongione says. “No one has the knowledge on this type of equipment.” So the company has brought in experts from Britain who are familiar with the equipment and worked with a local community college in Reading, Pennsylvania, to train students to become apprentices. The final outcome remains uncertain. “We still have a mountain to climb,” Rongione says. HOMEWARD BOUND More American CEOs are, in fact, deciding to bring home jobs from China and elsewhere....

By Seth Fiegerman and Julia Horowitz, CNN Tech Foxconn, the Taiwanese manufacturer that makes electronics for Apple and other tech companies, is coming to Wisconsin. The firm will invest $10 billion in Wisconsin to build a new manufacturing plant that produces LCD panels. The project will create 13,000 new jobs and should be completed by 2020, according to Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker. Foxconn’s estimate on jobs was more conservative. In a statement, the company said the project will create 3,000 jobs with the “potential” to generate up to 13,000 new jobs. Foxconn announced the investment from the White House. CEO Terry Gou was flanked by Walker, Vice President Mike Pence and House Speaker Paul Ryan. President Trump later joined them. Walker and Ryan thanked Trump for his work on the deal. “One thing we know about this president is how committed he is to reviving American manufacturing and bringing jobs home. This right here shows actual results,” said Ryan, a Republican who represents Wisconsin. Trump called Gou “one of the great businessmen anywhere in the world.” Shortly after President Trump’s inauguration, Gou began teasing plans to invest more than $7 billion in a plant for producing displays, with the potential to create as many as 50,000 jobs. However, Gou has been talking about shifting some manufacturing to the United States for several years, with little to show for it so far. In 2013, for example, Foxconn announced plans to build a $30 million plant in Pennsylvania. It has yet to be built. Foxconn got some generous tax incentives for its Wisconsin venture. The state’s deal for the new plant, which requires legislative approval, includes incentives totaling as much as $3 billion, Walker said. The details of the incentive package would be announced in the coming days, he said. Walker said the investment could transform Wisconsin. “We’ve named it Wiscon Valley,” Walker told reporters at the White House. “It could be very much like Silicon Valley.” Foxconn had considered building the plant in Ohio, Michigan and Pennsylvania, among other states. Foxconn currently has facilities in Virginia and Indiana, each of which employ fewer than 1,000 workers, according to its website. The announcement may give Trump a victory as he looks to bring...

By Cutting Tool Engineering Magazine Many people are under the impression that manufacturing jobs are only moving in one direction: offshore. While many corporations are shifting certain jobs overseas to reduce manufacturing costs, there’s a lot more to the story. In reality, there are many businesses that have been making strenuous efforts to bring jobs back to the United States, a phenomenon known as the reshoring movement. Want to learn more about reshoring in the United States? Keep reading to see which U.S. companies have brought the most jobs back to the states, plus more information on this important new movement. Companies reshore jobs in part due to increasing foreign labor costs, but that’s just one reason. Simply put, as automation and tools for engineering have improved, so too has the complexity of the manufacturing industry. And many specialty manufacturing jobs can’t be easily sent overseas. Contrary to popular belief, improvements in automation technology and engineering tools have been major assets to the new American economy. While some manufacturing jobs have been lost in recent decades, the productivity of the U.S. manufacturing sector has actually increased substantially. That means American companies are producing more goods for less cost, which results in better prices for consumers and better wages for workers. Even so, companies in the manufacturing industry are making continual efforts to bring jobs back into the United States. Often, these new manufacturing jobs and the latest tools for engineering require advanced education and highly technical skills that only American workers have to...

By Taras Berezowsky, Metal Miner Looks like the tide has finally turned. Extending that metaphor is easier now than it’s ever been for us writing on this topic: the reshoring of American manufacturing from abroad — and specifically, the net gains in jobs that we’ve been seeing in 2016 and early 2017 as compared with the trends in the early 2000s. (I envision the emigrating jobs huddled together for warmth on a seaworthy vessel, with Shanghai getting smaller in the distance as the Pacific waves toss the boat ever closer toward Long Beach… if only it were that poetic.) Back to reality. The Reshoring Initiative has just released its 2016 Data Report, and the numbers seem to tell a rosy story. According to the report press release, “in comparison to 2000-2003, when the United States lost, net, about 220,000 manufacturing jobs per year to offshoring, 2016 achieved a net gain of 27,000.” “The numbers demonstrate that reshoring and FDI are important contributing factors to the country’s rebounding manufacturing sector,” the release concluded. But of course, it’s not that easy. Major policy changes will have to be made or improved to continue the reshoring trend (which is still in its early stages), according to Harry Moser, founder of the Reshoring Initiative. In a way, the U.S. should aspire to host conditions like those in Germany, Moser told me, including a supportive government, VAT, low healthcare costs, and an appreciation of the benefit of local sourcing. “Germany has a huge trade surplus and manufacturing at about 20% of employment,” Moser said, “and [the U.S. has] a huge trade deficit and manufacturing at about 10%.” RELATED: We chatted with Moser in a video interview a few years ago when the latest results within the trend were gaining steam (below). The Good News for U.S. Metals Jobs According to the full report, in 2016, fabricated metals had a good showing with the fourth-most reshored jobs by industry category. Also, primary metals moved ahead of non-metallic minerals: Good to see that toys and hobbies industry jobs are coming back… but not nearly as quickly. The “Good/Bad/Who Knows” News for U.S. Metals Jobs One aspect of our new economy that’s...